Daedalus Quartet: Biography

Praised by The New Yorker (July 21, 2008) as “a fresh and vital young participant in what is a golden age of American string quartets,” the DAEDALUS QUARTET has established itself as a leader among the new generation of string ensembles. In the eight years of its existence the Daedalus Quartet has received plaudits from critics and listeners alike for the security, technical finish, interpretive unity, and sheer gusto of its performances — and this in cannily selected repertoire ranging from the classicism of Haydn to the rhythmic complexities and intuitive tonal language of Elliott Carter “Polished and vigorous” (The New York Times); “a young quartet whose moment has arrived” (The New York Sun); “jet-propelled rockets of blistering virtuosity …the music rang gloriously” (The Washington Post) — these are only a few of the accolades garnered by the Daedalus Quartet in recent seasons. In 2007 critic Steve Smith of The New York Times took particular notice of the refined musicality of Daedalus’s performance of Debussy’s String Quartet at Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center:

The Daedalus players — the sibling violinists Kyu-Young Kim and Min-Young Kim, the violist Jessica Thompson and the cellist Raman Ramakrishnan – underscored the work’s formal elegance with impeccable balance and articulation, while also emphasizing its elusive passion and wit through imaginative management of phrasing and dynamics. (January 19, 2007)

More recently, the Quartet received the highest praise from Jeremy Eichler of The Boston Globe in a review of a Daedalus performance of Shostakovich’s Third Quartet at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival in June 2008:

… a hair-raising rendition of Shostakovich’s Third Quartet. The group … dispensed both finesse and fury in the right proportions, and showed an intuitive feel for Shostakovich’s idiom, with its sarcasm, its tongue-in-cheek banality, and its explosive outbursts of emotion. (June 18, 2008)

Since its founding the Daedalus Quartet has performed in many of the world’s leading musical venues; in the United States and Canada these include Carnegie Hall, Lincoln Center (Great Performers series), the Library of Congress, the Corcoran Gallery in Washington, D.C., and Boston’s Gardner Museum, as well as on major series in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary, Winnipeg, and Vancouver. Abroad the ensemble has been heard in such famed locations as the Musikverein in Vienna, the Mozarteum in Salzburg, the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam, the Cité de la Musique in Paris, and in leading venues in Japan.

The Daedalus Quartet has won plaudits for its adventurous exploration of contemporary music, most notably the compositions of Elliott Carter, George Perle, György Kurtág, and György Ligeti. Among the works the ensemble has premiered is David Horne’s Flight from the Labyrinth, commissioned for the Quartet by the Caramoor Festival. The Quartet has also collaborated with some of the world’s finest instrumentalists: These include pianists Marc-André Hamelin, Simone Dinnerstein, Awadagin Pratt, Joyce Yang, and Benjamin Hochman; clarinetists Paquito D’Rivera and Alexander Fiterstein; and violists Roger Tapping and Donald Weilerstein. Upcoming collaborations include performances with clarinetist David Shifrin, violist Michael Tree, and cellist Peter Wiley.

The Daedalus Quartet released its debut CD recording on the estimable Bridge label in 2006, a disc that offered performances of Ravel’s String Quartet; the Sibelius String Quartet in D minor, Op. 56; and the Three Pieces by Stravinsky. The International Record Review of London reviewed the disk:

The first thing one notices about the Daedalus Quartet is how resplendent is their sound; on a surface level, this is absolutely gorgeous playing, and not even the Guarneri Quartet can produce such attractive sounds. … Fortunately, if you peel back that outer layer, you find that the musical argument is given its due, and that there are brains to go with the beauty.

To date the Quartet has forged associations with some of America’s leading classical music and educational institutions: Carnegie Hall, through its European Concert Hall Organization (ECHO) Rising Stars program; and Lincoln Center, which appointed the Daedalus Quartet as the Chamber Music Society Two quartet for 2004-06. The Daedalus Quartet has been Columbia University’s Quartet-in-Residence since 2005, and has served as Quartet-in-Residence at the University of Pennsylvania since 2006. The Quartet won Chamber Music America’s Guarneri String Quartet Award, which funded a three-year residency in Suffolk County, Long Island, beginning with the 2007-08 season.

The 2008-09 season — exceptionally busy for Daedalus — will find the Quartet touring the United States, Germany, Austria, and Belgium, commitments that will total some ninety concerts, including six afternoon concerts devoted to Haydn quartets at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre in New York City. The Quartet’s October 2008 tour includes performances in Stamford, CT; Richmond, Virginia Beach, and Williamsburg, VA; Mobile; Cincinnati; Harrisburg; and the University of Pennsylvania, among others. For the month of November the Quartet travels to Germany, Austria, and Belgium. During December 2008 through February 2009 the Quartet returns to America to perform throughout the East Coast, including on the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society series. In March 2009 the Quartet is again heard in Europe for concerts in Germany. In April the Quartet returns to the United States to perform again throughout the East Coast, with a highlight performance at Weill Recital Hall at Carnegie Hall in New York.